The book focuses on the development of advanced
functions for field-based Temporal Geographical Information Systems (TGIS).
These fields describe natural, epidemiological, medical, economic, and social
systems distributed across space and time under conditions of uncertainty. The
TGIS functions allow the synthesis of knowledge bases from several sources and
multiple scales, and can be used in a wide variety of spatiotemporal modelling,
prediction and data assimilation studies. TGIS functions may involve a large
number of data processing and imaging techniques. A distinction can be
made between statistical learning techniques that are useful at the descriptive/correlation
level of scientific inquiry and stochastic operational techniques that are
appropriate at the explanation/prediction level. The information
generated by TGIS plays an important role in scientific hypothesis testing,
explanation, risk assessment, and geographotemporal decision making.

The book is organized around 4 main themes: concepts,
mathematical tools, computer programs, and applications. The reader is also
familiarized with the TGIS toolbox of advanced functions and the associated
library of comprehensive computer programs.

A CD-ROM is included with the book, so that the reader can
readily use the computerized advanced TGIS functions of the computer library to
reconstruct many of the numerical applications discussed in the book.

System requirements: The system requirements to install
BMElib with the CD-ROM included in this book are: A CD-ROM drive ( for
installation from the CD); 10 MB of disk space to install BMElib; the
system requirements for MATLAB version 5.3 or later. MATLAB is a product
of MathWorks. The operating systems supported by MATLAB are UNIX, Linux,
and Microsoft Windows for PC. A full description of the system requirements for
MATLAB 5.3 or later can be found at the MathWorks website (http://www.mathworks.com)